{% include "includes/auth/janrain/signIn_traditional.html" with message='It looks like you are already verified. If you still have trouble signing in, you probably need a new confirmation link email.' %}

Still no deal in the Senate on GOP health care plan

Republican Senators headed home for the weekend still at odds over the details of a GOP bill to overhaul the Obama health law, as Senate leaders vowed to press ahead early next week with a first procedural vote on the matter, though it still isn’t clear what exactly the GOP might vote on in an effort to break the deadlock on this top agenda item of President Donald Trump.

“The Democrats did their bill on their own, and obviously it’s got flaws that I think everyone would recognize; Republicans are beginning to feel like we’re getting into that same mode, if you want to be honest,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who said he worried that the GOP plan was being slapped together without an overall grand plan.

With a procedural vote expected next week on a motion to start debate on the bill, it wasn’t even clear for Senators what GOP leaders would offer on the floor as an alternative to the House-passed health care bill.

“I’m not yet decided,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) told a group of reporters pursuing him in the hallways of the Capitol. “It depends what’s in the bill.”

And on that point, GOP leaders didn’t have an answer on the details.

"That's a luxury we don't have" –@JohnCornyn when asked "don't some people want to know the plan before they vote" on health care.

GOP Senators were being pursued every-which-way-possible at the Capitol complex, as reporters sought the latest update on the health care bill.

Down in the basement of the Capitol, as Senators arrived for votes, Democrats would walk by – and sometimes not one reporter would move; a few seconds later, a Republican Senator would walk off the subway, and was immediately mobbed by reporters.

“I think they want to talk to you,” a smiling Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said as reporters descended upon him and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-ND), who sold insurance for many years in his home state.

“With the Obamacare model that’s in place today, you’re going to have increases in deductibles and co-pays,” Rounds argued to reporters, though GOP Senators haven’t rallied around what their full answer should be to reverse that.

“You just have people committed to trying to fix this problem,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has repeatedly made clear his frustration with how GOP leaders have tried to put together this bill.

And that has led some Republicans to openly worry about how the GOP is forging a final plan.

“It’s feeling a little bazaar like – like a bidding war right now,” Corker said.

I wish more Republicans were asked about $13,000 deductibles b/c they are a design feature of bill, and can't just be blamed on CBO analysis